{"id":12457,"date":"2025-08-20T09:02:52","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T09:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/heres-how-trump-could-throw-a-wrench-into-hill-funding-negotiations-as-shutdown-looms\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T09:02:52","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T09:02:52","slug":"heres-how-trump-could-throw-a-wrench-into-hill-funding-negotiations-as-shutdown-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/heres-how-trump-could-throw-a-wrench-into-hill-funding-negotiations-as-shutdown-looms\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s how Trump could throw a \u2018wrench\u2019 into Hill funding negotiations as shutdown looms"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s budget director has talked about attempting the ultimate override of Congress\u2019 funding prerogatives during the final 45 days of the fiscal year \u2014 and that time is now.<\/p>\n

With six weeks left until Oct. 1, lawmakers are staring down a government shutdown deadline alongside the threat of a \u201cpocket rescission,\u201d a controversial White House tactic to cancel federal cash without the consent of Congress. It\u2019s also a ploy that the government\u2019s top watchdog, along with key lawmakers from both parties<\/a>, say is illegal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe money evaporates at the end of the fiscal year,\u201d White House budget chief Russ Vought said last month in defense of the gambit, adding it has \u201cbeen used before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawmakers anticipate Trump will send Congress a formal rescissions request to claw back billions of dollars in federal funding as soon as lawmakers return from recess in September.<\/p>\n

Already, the threat of the White House then unilaterally canceling the funding in October \u2014 regardless of Congress\u2019 response to the request \u2014 is straining negotiations between Democrats and Republicans desperately trying to head off a shutdown with bipartisan negotiations, which Vought is also actively seeking to undermine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is trying to throw a wrench in this by introducing or sending to us a second rescission bill \u2014 by trying to do pocket rescissions,\u201d Delaware Sen. Chris Coons<\/a>, the top Democrat on the appropriations panel that funds the military, said of Vought in an interview.<\/p>\n

It also would undoubtedly throw Republicans into another politically dicey balancing act of trying not to buck their president while answering to constituents who are feeling the effects of the administration\u2019s mass gutting of widely used government programs.<\/p>\n

Congress cleared an initial rescissions package of $9 billion in cuts to public broadcasting and foreign aid in July. The White House has stayed publicly mum on what sort of programming it would seek to slash next, but officials have previously signaled the Department of Education will be the target of a second package<\/a>, which could align with Trump\u2019s controversial goal of eventually eliminating the agency altogether.<\/p>\n

As for the size of this upcoming clawbacks request, Republicans have mixed predictions. Last month, Speaker Mike Johnson<\/a> told members that a second package would be less than the $9 billion, but other GOP lawmakers said they expect to be asked to revoke much more money than that.<\/p>\n

Under decades-old budget law, the White House is allowed to send Congress a rescissions request and then withhold the cash for 45 days while lawmakers consider whether to approve, reject or ignore the proposal. If lawmakers don\u2019t pass the rescissions bill, the administration must spend the money as Congress intended. These were the conditions under which the administration transmitted its most recent plan.<\/p>\n

Now, with less than 45 days before the current fiscal year comes to a close, top Trump administration officials argue the White House can send another rescissions package and then treat the funding as expired come midnight on Sept. 30 \u2014 regardless of congressional action.<\/p>\n

And if the White House moves forward with the plan, it could do more than just cause political headaches. It very likely would kick off a high-stakes legal battle over Congress\u2019 funding power and whether a presidential administration must spend all of the money prescribed by law or whether the spending levels are simply \u201ca ceiling,\u201d as Vought has contended.<\/p>\n

The Government Accountability Office has said repeatedly that pocket rescissions are against the law and would \u201ccede Congress\u2019s power of the purse by allowing a president to, in effect, change the law by shortening the period of availability for fixed-period funds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vought has taken aim at the watchdog,<\/b> and Mark Paoletta, the Office of Management and Budget general counsel, piled on this month.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump Derangement Syndrome is on full display\u201d at GAO, Paoletta said on social media<\/a>, and \u201cwrong on pocket rescissions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCongress is well aware\u201d that the law allows the maneuver, he added, pointing out that lawmakers did not bother heeding GAO\u2019s urging 50 years ago to fix a loophole leaving the legality question open to interpretation.<\/p>\n

Yet even some of the Republican lawmakers who are hungry for more chances to kill funding are wary of the Trump administration using the rescissions process to undermine Congress\u2019 funding power under Article I of the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Sen. Thom Tillis<\/a> (R-N.C.), who reluctantly voted in support of the rescissions request last month, said he won\u2019t support more clawback packages if the White House doesn\u2019t provide account-by-account details of how the funding would be cut.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m just not going to aid and abet moving appropriations decisions over to the Article II branch,\u201d Tillis said in an interview.<\/p>\n

Trump \u201cjust happens to be a Republican,\u201d Tillis continued, but \u201cwe could regret this, just as Democrats would, if they are tempted to do the same thing. That’s why you\u2019ve got to draw lines here institutionally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Concerns about precedent, legality and political appetite are converging on the reality for members of both parties that Republicans can\u2019t afford to alienate Democrats, whose votes they likely need to pass any government funding bill to avoid a shutdown next month.<\/p>\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune<\/a>, when asked about a second rescissions package, stressed he would prefer to handle any more cuts through the regular appropriations process. \u201cMy hope would be that that\u2019s the way we deal with a lot of these issues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Democrats hope so too, and they have warned that any Trump administration effort to claw back money already approved by Congress \u2014 \u201cpocket\u201d or otherwise \u2014 would undermine lawmakers\u2019 ability to work across party lines to avoid a shutdown.<\/p>\n

In remarks late last month alongside House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries<\/a> and his party\u2019s senior appropriators, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer<\/a> said Democrats<\/a> would try to reach a compromise with Republicans despite GOP lawmakers\u2019 approval of the latest $9 billion rescissions package.<\/p>\n

But, he added, \u201cRepublicans are making it extremely difficult to do that \u2026 by talking about rescissions, pocket rescissions, impoundment \u2014 which would undo anything that we did in the budgets.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump\u2019s budget director has talked about attempting the ultimate override of Congress\u2019 funding prerogatives during the final 45 days of the fiscal year \u2014 and that time is now. With six weeks left until Oct. 1, lawmakers are staring down a government shutdown deadline alongside the threat of a \u201cpocket rescission,\u201d a controversial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}